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AirAsia X continued its growth trajectory in the fourth quarter of 2011, carrying 0.64 million passengers, an increase of 7.3% over the same quarter in 2010, with the same aircraft fleet of 9 Airbus A330s and 2 Airbus A340s. This brings its total passengers carried in 2011 to 2.5 million (up 31.5% from 1.9 million passengers in 2010), and its highest ever full year load factor of 80.1% (up 3.6 percentage-points from 2010). This was achieved despite a challenging year with natural disasters in Christchurch and Japan, and floods in Queensland that slowed down demand on affected routes.

In terms of passenger traffic, AirAsia X grew by 12.3% to 3.6 billion Revenue-Passenger Kms (RPKs) for Q4-2011, and finishing the full year at 14.1 billion RPKs, a 36.2% growth from 2010. Total capacity for Q4-2011 grew by 12.2% to 4.4 billion Available-Seat-Kms (ASKs), resulting in a load factor of 82%, and 17.6 billion ASKs for 2011, a 30.0% year-on-year growth.

Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of AirAsia X commented, “AirAsia X was able to achieve positive load factor growth and average fare growth at the same time, on all of its routes that it has operated for at least a full year. With both load factor and average fares growing positively, we were able to achieve a total Revenue of RM1.9 billion in 2011, a 45% growth over 2010. This demonstrates the resilience of the low-cost long-haul model, and underpins AirAsia X’s recently announced 2012 route network strategy to focus on building a stronger presence in its core markets. The plan will see AirAsia X increase our flight frequencies on existing routes and look at expanding our network further across Asia Pacific.”

Cargo operations continues to be strong, with AirAsia X carrying 8,474 tonnes of freight in the fourth quarter and 35,016 tonnes for the year, registering a 31.6% growth from a year ago.

Operationally, even with its high aircraft utilisation model, AirAsia X has been able to produce industry-leading engineering reliability and capping the year with an on-time performance rate of 88% of departures within 15 minutes.